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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Hello, guys. I'm a little stumped with a problem in Ubuntu 10.04, maybe someone can help me.

After a few years of Ubuntu 8.04, about a month ago, I upgraded to 10.04. Everything was going nice and easy until this morning's updates. I performed updates normally, rebooted and got a message saying the default settings for GNOME power management hadn't been configured. My desktop reverted to a theme I wasn't using before (I had the Dust theme on) and I had some trouble logging in to the desktop.

I lurked about for someone reporting a similar problem and tried a solution that seemingly worked (purged gnome power management and reinstall, reboot both before and after reinstall). Only now I still can't change my theme.

Accessing Appearance Preferences, the only thing I can actually change is colors. Window borders, pointer, icons and display remain as they were when the error message first came up. Also, I can see a display of file size underneath files and number of items underneath folders... I figured I was in a safe mode of sorts, so I logged out, and back in - same issue.

So either this is really simple and I'm making a fool of myself now, or there's something rotten here. Can someone help me?

Alright, after messing about a little, I think I managed to solve at least part of the problem.

I figured the whole thing was related to the gnome power manager config. As I wrote before, I uninstalled and reinstalled it and the problem persisted.

I lurked about a little more, since a lot of people seem to get stuck with the same problem, and thought to do

Code:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-settings-daemon

I did it, restarted, and yay, I can change the color scheme and icons again. But the theme itself and mouse pointer are still not working.

I also get the same bulky icons, the same font, the same sort of display I was getting when stuck with the blue-and-gray theme. My external HD also does not open. I double click it, all icons vanish for a second, then come back, but the drive itself will not open up. I tried moving a file to it by dragging the file directly from desktop to the HD icon, I get the File Operations window, so I assume the HD is working, but not being displayed. The HD also shows up prettily in Disk Utility and it's not full.

On a desperate attempt to solve it, after lurking a while longer, I found two more hints: maybe my disk's full (from what I managed to see, it's not) and running